Posted on 01/12/2015 5:26:57 PM PST by Coleus
In the 1980’s, 12-year-old Martin Pistorious became seriously ill with what doctor’s believed was Cryptococci Meningitis. His health started deteriorating and Martin lost his ability to move, make eye contact and even speak to others. His doctors told his parents, Rodney and Joan Pistorious, to bring him home and let him die. They told them he was as good as a vegetable.
However, he didn’t die. Joan said, “Martin just kept going, just kept going.” According to NPR news, his father would get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, get him dressed, load him in the car, take him to the special care center where he’d leave him. Rodney said, “Eight hours later, I’d pick him up, bathe him, feed him, put him in bed, set my alarm for two hours so that I’d wake up to turn him so that he didn’t get bedsores.”
For twelve years, Martin’s family cared for him without any sign that he was improving. Joan started to despair and even told her son, “I hope you die.” Today she acknowledges that was a horrible thing to say but says she just wanted some sort of relief. Remarkably, now Martin is 39-years-old and says he was totally aware of everything going on around him.
He said, “Yes, I was there, not from the very beginning, but about two years into my vegetative state, I began to wake up. I was aware of everything, just like any normal person. Everyone was so used to me not being there that they didn’t notice when I began to be present again. The stark reality hit me that I was going to spend the rest of my life like that — totally alone.”
Unfortunately, Martin was even aware of his mother’s harsh words and began believing that no one would ever love him. He said, “You don’t really think about anything. You simply exist. It’s a very dark place to find yourself because, in a sense, you are allowing yourself to vanish.”
Martin spent most of those days at a care center where his caregivers played Barney reruns over and over again. They did this because they believed he was a vegetable too. He said, “I cannot even express to you how much I hated Barney.”
But eventually, Martin became frustrated with being trapped in his own body and started to try and take control of his life. He learned to tell time by the rising and setting of the sun and would reframe even the ugliest of thoughts that haunted him like his mother’s wish for him to die. “As time passed, I gradually learned to understand my mother’s desperation. Every time she looked at me, she could see only a cruel parody of the once-healthy child she had loved so much,” said Martin.
Now Martin is married and has penned a memoire about his life. He has gained control of his body and in his book Ghost Boy, he writes, “My mind was trapped inside a useless body, my arms and legs weren’t mine to control and my voice was mute. I couldn’t make a sign or sounds to let anyone know I’d become aware again. I was invisible—the ghost boy.”
Martin’s survival is a testament to how little we actually know about the human brain and a good reminder that we should value all life— even when we hear the terrifying words “your loved one is a vegetable” or in a “vegetative state” from a medical professional.
I would have died. I hate Barney enough, and I'm not stuck with it (any more, my daughter is grown).
I recall hearing of a case many decades ago of a similar development.
As an infant, a girl received a shunt to prevent hydrocephalus. She, too, I believe underwent a follow-up study which revealed that her shunt had evidently failed some time early in her childhood.
Despite the fact that her brain, as in the case you posted, occupied just a small volume of the skull, she led a normal life and received a college degree with a B+ average.
“I’ve been losing confidence in science (medicine, high technology, meteorology, etc.) for some time now because of its blunders.”
Science does not blunder, it is people who pretend to be competent scientists that do the blundering.
It should also be noted that so-called medicine is frequently practiced as an art or less and not as a science. Your typical general practice physician practices clinical medicine, meaning they do not conduct scientific inquiry into a patient’s medical problems. Instead, they apply pro forma policies and doctrines which purport and often fail to be fully scientific in their application to a patient’s medical problems.
Science is like any other human endeavor from science to religion, the reliability of the discipline is only as good as the performance of those persons who purport to practice the discipline. Science is unlike some other disciplines to the extent its truths can be reliably determined by observation of repeatable and predictable experiment.
Bfl
Abaolutely.
I purchased his book, Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius
from Amazon in Kindle format. It is also available from Barnes and Noble and you can get a signed copy from the guy’s website.
It is one of those books that will almost certainly become a movie one of these days. It is inspiring, well written and nearly impossible to put down.
The link is right there at the top of the page.
I was just thinking the very same thing. I doubt that it would bother him one bit. His actions or lack of action in defence of Terry Shivo told me all I needed to know about that sorry excuse for a human being.
May God bless the Father of that boy.That is love.
how does one not go insane locked up in their own mind like that? I can’t grasp that.
ping
Freepmail wagglebee to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.
FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
![](http://i47.tinypic.com/15mn2hx.jpg";;)
When did they do the brain scan on Terri? Before her death or after? I’m curious, because if it was after her death after almost 2 weeks of no hydration, wouldn’t it have appeared to be nonexistent or shrunken?
Felos was waving the brain scan around on TV long before Terri’s dehydration, while simultaneously denouncing anyone curious about the circumstances of her brain damage and subsequent treatment as invading her privacy.
If anything was skewed by her dehydration, it was her autopsy.
Amen. I cannot get over what happened in Florida to Terri Schiavo.
“Vegetative State,” Says “I Was Aware of Everything” = Quaaludes
Are you freaking kidding me? “No brain left” indeed. You have drunk the koolaid
I don't remember how old I was when I made the decision, but as far back as I can remember, I've always known that murder is wrong. By the time I had the opportunity to okay the killing of my husband after his stroke, the decision had already been made.
Living with the consequences of that decision hasn't always been easy, but when it gets especially hard, it helps to be reminded that I could have made a decision that's even harder to live with.
It's been especially stressful lately, and last night it came to a head. After crying myself to sleep last night, I woke up this morning feeling nothing but negative emotions. Despair. Guilt. Frustration.
Thank you for reminding me that it could be so much worse. I could have decided to avoid all this unpleasantness, at the expense of my husband's life, and my soul.
Thank you for what you did. I believe that the Terri Schiavo case was the last straw for the country formerly known as the United States. The government’s depravity was fully on view and all the air seeped out of the Republican balloon.
Very well stated!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.